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Trinity Western debate not a conflict over competing rights

Ontario and Nova Scotia were right not to accredit a B.C. law school that requires students to sign a covenant that discriminates against gay people.

Trinity Western University in Langley, B.C. (Courtesy of Trintiy Western University Communications)

By Kimberly Potter

Mon., May 5, 2014

The conflict between equality and religious rights has taken centre stage this past year. In a bill that has died on the order paper, the Parti Québécois sought to prohibit public sector employees from wearing “conspicuous” religious symbols in the name of fair and equal treatment of all beliefs. Controversy also arose when a York University professor refused to accommodate a student’s request to be removed from a group project in which he would have to interact with women on the basis of his religious beliefs.

At first blush, the debate over the accreditation of Trinity Western University’s proposed law school also appears to involve such a conflict. Trinity Western is an evangelical Christian university in British Columbia. The university requires all of its students, faculty and staff to adhere to a Community Covenant, which requires abstinence from “sexual intimacy that violates the sacredness of marriage between a man and a woman.”

Although the law societies in a number of provinces including British Columbia have approved accreditation, both Ontario and Nova Scotia’s law societies voted against accreditation with the consequence that Trinity Western’s graduates will not be licensed to practice law in those provinces. In an article posted on Trinity Western’s website, the school’s president, Bob Kuhn, was quoted as saying that these decisions “send the chilling message that you cannot hold religious values and also participate fully in public society.”

Despite the rhetoric, the conflict over the accreditation of Trinity Western is not a conflict over competing rights at all. On the one hand, the equality rights at issue are clear. British Columbia’s human rights legislation prohibits discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. The rights of prospective homosexual students are directly engaged, as they cannot attend Trinity Western unless they acknowledge the “sacredness of marriage between a man and a woman.”

In other words, they must tacitly agree that marriage between same sex couples is wrong: at best inferior, at worst immoral. This is a clear affront to the dignity of homosexual people.

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On the other hand, it is not clear whose religious rights are implicated. The religious rights of the students who attend Trinity Western are not implicated. They are free to practice their religion, abstain from sexual intimacy until marriage, and hold as well as express the belief that marriage between a man and a woman is sacred.

It is also not the case that future graduates of Trinity Western’s law school would be barred from practicing in Ontario or Nova Scotia because of their religious beliefs. They would be denied entry because they graduated from an unaccredited law school.

Trinity Western, in turn, has not been denied accreditation because it is a faith-based school, but because requiring its members to adhere to the Community Covenant discriminates against people on the basis of their sexual orientation. As an institution, and not an individual, Trinity Western does not have religious rights.

Although the school is permitted under British Columbia’s human rights legislation to “prefer” adherents of Christianity in its admission policies, this exemption should not translate into a religious right to require homosexual students to renounce a fundamental part of their identity as part of the price of admission.

As the adage goes, “the right to swing my arm ends where my neighbour’s nose begins.” Religious accommodation must have its limits. This is particularly the case when an institution that is responsible for training lawyers to uphold the laws of Canada, including the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, claims the right to discriminate in the name of religion.

In voting against accreditation in a case where the equality interests are clear and the religious freedoms at stake ill-defined, Ontario and Nova Scotia’s law societies got it right.

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